WOW! Overwhelmingly positive feedback! Great to hear that! I will test when I am back home today.

@kookaburra
I counted number of individually controlled zones using test file "Backlight test DivX dot2.avi" . It is a white fat dot moving horizontally and vertically on black background. In the dark you can see how the zones light up sequentially when white dot passes over them.

@kookaburra
You can download file from here: http://db.tt/dOtGQKyJ
But its only usability is to count LED zones. It is known they are 224 for 46" and 288 for 52". There were speculations on forum boards, that 9606 had only 112 zones. Which I witness with my own eyes is not true.

@kookaburra
You can download file from here: http://db.tt/dOtGQKyJ
But its only usability is to count LED zones. It is known they are 224 for 46" and 288 for 52". There were speculations on forum boards, that 9606 had only 112 zones. Which I witness with my own eyes is not true.

The 58PFL9956H/12 has been running for some time with new firmware 0.14.99,
Setting the "best picture" still has from time to image lightning. Although not as it used to (permanently) but it is sometimes present.
The "standard" to them now.
I mean that the next one with the firmware refine still can.
In any case, Philips is on the right track. I fit very well the new firmware.
Been the overexposure of individual objects in the image (for example, faces) are also eliminated with this firmware.
I do not mean that the black is so tired ... must be tested further.
The isf calibration constant from the Software Update unaffected.
The PNM bug is history.

@BjornRuud
When I was setting up my TV set, I noticed that with "standard" I was getting best results in distinguishing both ends of the grey scale. "Best picture" dims too aggressively the dark areas, making the blacks merge.

Sadly the crackling (or digital noise) over the optical audio port is still there. It sounds like a glitch in a damaged audio file. It seems to be even rarer than before but is very annoying in a quiet scene. I can't reproduce the problem as it happens randomly. During 4 hours of testing various sources and material it has so far only happened once. Previously it usually happened 1-2 times per hour on average.

My setup: BluRay player, Boxee Box and Xbox 360 all downmix to stereo PCM and output audio via HDMI to TV. Audio then goes via optical out to DAC and amp. The crackling happens with all audio sources. There was a sync problem with Dolby Digital audio a while back, it might be related?

@zlatko
Yeah I noticed that too, but in several dark scenes I tested it wasn't a problem so I'm leaning towards "best picture" for now. It seems to work well on a wide selection of material.

PNM bug fixed!
Backlight dimming is a lot better - not perfect, but much improved!
Need to recalibrate set as brightness/contrast appear to have been altered - the values are of course the same, but the behaviour is different.

- yesterday evening i watched a blu ray disc. After 5 minutes the TV turned off on itself but the sound was still there because it came out of the speakers of the HTS. Then i tried to turn on the TV again. The first attempt failed. I only saw the Philips Logo and right after that the TV turned off again. At second attempt the TV kept turned on.

- sometimes i still see the message "encrypted channel" on HD+ channels.

- still sporadic picture artefacts every couple minutes and sounddrops with Dolby Digital on HD+ channels. With an external DVB-C receiver i do not experience these issues on the affected channels

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